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250 The Human CycleBut humanity may not be as persistent or as plastic as the sonof Varuna, the search may stop short anywhere. Only if it isintended that he shall now at last arrive and discover, will theSpirit break each insufficient formula as soon as it has shapeditself and compel the thought of man to press forward to a largerdiscovery and in the end to the largest and most luminous of all.Something of the kind has been happening, but only in a veryexternal way and on the surface. After the material formulawhich governed the greater part of the nineteenth century hadburdened man with the heaviest servitude to the machinery ofthe outer material life that he has ever yet been called uponto bear, the first attempt to break through, to get to the livingreality in things and away from the mechanical idea of life andliving and society, landed us in that surface vitalism which hadalready begun to govern thought before the two formulas inextricablylocked together lit up and flung themselves on thelurid pyre of the world-war. The vital élan has brought us nodeliverance, but only used the machinery already created witha more feverish insistence, a vehement attempt to live morerapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will to act and to succeed,to enlarge the mere force of living or to pile up a gigantic efficiencyof the collective life. It could not have been otherwiseeven if this vitalism had been less superficial and external, moretruly subjective. To live, to act, to grow, to increase the vitalforce, to understand, utilise and fulfil the intuitive impulse oflife are not things evil in themselves: rather they are excellentthings, if rightly followed and rightly used, that is to say, if theyare directed to something beyond the mere vitalistic impulse andare governed by that within which is higher than Life. The Lifepoweris an instrument, not an aim; it is in the upward scalethe first great subjective supraphysical instrument of the Spiritand the base of all action and endeavour. But a Life-power thatsees nothing beyond itself, nothing to be served except its ownorganised demands and impulses, will be very soon like the forceof steam driving an engine without the driver or an engine inwhich the locomotive force has made the driver its servant andnot its controller. It can only add the uncontrollable impetus